enTidy Repohttp://tidyrepo.com
A curated list of the best WordPress pluginsTue, 28 Apr 2015 15:11:41 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.2Tidy Repo is Now an Open Source Projecthttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/985053
http://tidyrepo.com/tidy-repo-is-now-an-open-source-project/#commentsTue, 28 Apr 2015 15:07:59 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3244Anyone who has ever started their own site or service knows that it can be hard work. Like late into the night with no sleep kind of work. Believing in what you’re doing helps a lot. When I first started Tidy Repo a couple of years ago, it was because I saw a major hole, […]

]]>Anyone who has ever started their own site or service knows that it can be hard work. Like late into the night with no sleep kind of work. Believing in what you’re doing helps a lot.

When I first started Tidy Repo a couple of years ago, it was because I saw a major hole, and I didn’t see anyone else filling it. It was hard to sort through WordPress plugins and find the good ones. So little by little, I’ve been chipping away at the tens of thousands of plugins out there, trying to find the good ones, and surface them as often as I can. I haven’t always been consistent, but I’ve always tried to keep the quality up. I’ve heard that I did a pretty good job at that.

But a lot in my life has also changed since I first started the site up. I got married. Evolved in my day job. Worked on other projects, big and small. And I’ve always kept chipping away at Tidy Repo because it was a labor of love. My first love actually. And first loves are hard to let go.

From time to time, it has occurred to me that a lot more could be done with this site. I’ve gotten suggestions from lots of different people, and I’ve tried to incorporate them where I could. Frankly though, I don’t always have the time. That’s becoming more and more of a problem lately. I want to see Tidy Repo grow into a proper resource. I can’t do that alone.

About six months ago, I came across this site called Assembly. I was looking for ways to share my need for side projects, and they had put together an amazing tool. Users could throw their ideas out there to the community. And developers, designers, and content creators from across the web could get together and work on that idea. Based on the amount of work you put into a product, you receive a virtual currency which gives you a stake in the company. It’s more or less an equity share that entitles you to a percentage of what the product makes. It’s a beautifully done site, a passionate group of people, and a fantastic platform.

Starting now, I have open sourced Tidy Repo and put it up on Assembly. What does that mean? For starters, the entire codebase for this site is hosted on GitHub. All of the articles I’ve ever written for this site have been put up on Penflip.

I am asking you, the community that has followed along with me, and helped Tidy Repo grow, to now make a part of this site your own. To contribute to it, grow it, and take it wherever you want it to go. If you visit Tidy Repo’s Assembly page, you will see a list of bounties. These are things that Tidy Repo needs, and the list is small right now. A good amount of them at the moment are paths for discussion. I’d love to hear what you think the strengths of the site are, and more importantly, its flaws.

If WordPress has taught me anything, it is that an open source project can be extremely messy and incredibly rewarding. I don’t plan on powering 25% of the web any time soon, but I think I was on to something with this site. I’m hoping you agree.

What about me? Well, I’m not going anywhere. I have lots of ideas for the site, and I will keep writing articles as often as I can. Nevertheless, I don’t have the time that I used to. Hopefully that will change at some point, but I don’t want this site to suffer. Quite the opposite actually, I’d like to see it grow.

So please, if you have a moment, go check out Tidy Repo on Assembly. Poke around. Jump into a discussion, tell me what you think. I want to hear your thoughts.

And for those of you that have stood on the sidelines and known that you could make Tidy Repo better; individuals who want to make this site your own. Reach out, shoot me an email if you like. I’m looking for people that want to raise the stakes, and help guide Tidy Repo’s future. That person can be you.

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/tidy-repo-is-now-an-open-source-project/feed/6WP User Frontend Prohttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/792699
http://tidyrepo.com/wp-user-frontend-pro/#commentsThu, 23 Apr 2015 13:43:57 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3193Since just about the dawn of WordPress, moving the WordPress backend to the frontend of your site has been a bit of a hassle. WP User Frontend Pro opens up this door, allowing you access to forms that let users edit posts and pages, login and register, and edit their profile, all without going to the […]

]]>Since just about the dawn of WordPress, moving the WordPress backend to the frontend of your site has been a bit of a hassle. WP User Frontend Pro opens up this door, allowing you access to forms that let users edit posts and pages, login and register, and edit their profile, all without going to the WordPress admin.

Simple and Customizable Forms

At the root of WP User Frontend is a customizable form builder that you can use to bring backend functionality to the WordPress frontend. These forms truly can be made to do anything, but the simplest example is a form for editing posts and pages. When you first activate the plugin, it will ask if you want the plugin to set up a series of pages automatically for you. What this will do is create a few new pages and add the proper shortcodes and settings to them so you can get started right away. But in order to complete the process, you’ll need to set up your first form.

Creating your first form

You can do this by going to User Frontend -> Forms and clicking “Add Form”. You’ll be brought to a simple form editor, which is completely drag and drop. Across the right sidebar will be a list of common elements which you will need to build a proper form for editing post. For instance, you’ll at least want to drag in the “Post Title,” “Post Body” and “Category” fields. This will ensure that users will be able to access the post data necessary to make changes.

However, you can take this one step further. There are also a whole list of elements that match up to custom taxonomies and custom fields. When you drag one of these over into your form, you will be able to customize exactly what the meta key or taxonomy it should match with. So if you have a post that is built up of a lot of content blocks, making use of custom fields, you can easily build up a form that has access to all of this information. And there are a wide range of elements to chose from, like dropdowns, Google Maps, Image or File Uploads, and taxonomy builders.

Users can now edit posts on the frontend of your site

When you finished setting up your first form, you’ll most likely want to make it the default, so you can call it something like “Post Editor.” Then, you can hop over to User Frontend -> Settings and from the “General Options” tab, select your newly created form from the “Default Post Form” drop-down. But you are not limited to just one form, and in fact, you will probably want to create a few. If there is a special custom post type that requires special custom fields for instance, you can go to the “Form Settings” tab in the form editor, and select from a list of post types. You can also set up some basic settings for the form, like where to redirect when a new post is added or edited, and default settings for comments and revisions.

Registration and Login

Of course, forms are useful for more than just editing or adding posts. You can also move your registration and login pages from the backend to front with the click of a few buttons. When the plugin sets up its default pages, it will also create one for your login and registration forms. That way, users can log into your site on a customized page, which gets around the problems with customizing WordPress’ default login / register page. The login page is pretty standard (username and password), and is automatically added to a page titled “Login,” though it can also be added with the shortcode, “[wpuf-login]”.

Create multiple registration forms

However, you have a bit more control over the Registration form that is shown. This is added to a page titled “Registration,” and can be customized by going to User Frontend -> Registration Forms in the WordPress admin. I’ll point out right now that “Forms” is plural here for a reason. You can have multiple registration forms if that suits the needs of your site. But the best way to get started is to edit the existing “Registration” form, and add any fields you want to it. By default, this form will only collect a username and password, but you can add any fields you want to the registration form by clicking on any of the elements listed in the right sidebar. You can add default profile fields to the form, like “Nickname,” “Biographical Info,” or “Website.” Or, you can select from a wide range of custom elements (radio buttons, drop-downs, Google Maps, etc.) to collect information to be placed in custom fields.

You can make the registration form as simple or as complex as you want. And you can hop over to the “Settings” tab to customize what kind of user role a new registration should be assigned, and other custom options. You can also set up multiple registration forms for users of different types or roles.

Profile Builder

When you view your registration forms, you will notice that in the last column labeled “Shortcode” there are actually two shortcodes listed, one for Registration and one for Edit Profile. That’s because any form you create for registration can also be used by existing users to edit their profile. If you paste the edit profile shortcode into a page, then any user who visits this page that is logged in will be able to edit their profile. That means you can easily set up a separate form for registration and the profile builder, or use the same for both.

As I said, most of WP User Frontend’s features comes from your ability to create and customize forms, and post them to the frontend of your site. From there, you can do pretty much anything you want with the plugin.

Customizing the Experience

The plugin also offers quite a few options for customizing your forms to fit your site’s needs. Most of these options can be tweaked in a global way by going to User Frontend -> Settings. Here, you will be able to choose who can edit posts, whether to load in external scripts, which form should be used as a baseline, or default, which pages should be used for login and registration, and a whole lot more. Though the plugin sets you up with some smart defaults, it is worth looking through and seeing if there are any options that can be tweaked.

Tweaking some basic settings

Most of these options can also be changed for each form by accessing a form’s “Post Settings” and “Edit Settings”. What I mean to say is that you would be just fine if you never touched the options at all. But if you decide you want to get something a bit different from the plugin, there are plenty of opportunities to do so.

If you’re looking for a quick and simple way to start editing posts and profiles from your sites frontend, then WP User Frontend should work very well. There is a lite version available, which comes with only one form and not as many features, but it gives you a good sense of what the plugin can do. The premium version of the plugin has the full features listed here, and ranges from $49 for a single site, to $159 for use on unlimited sites, which of course comes with the usual updates and priority support for 1 year.

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/wp-user-frontend-pro/feed/2Voice Searchhttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/781148
http://tidyrepo.com/voice-search/#respondMon, 20 Apr 2015 18:08:56 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3210The wonders of the Web Speech API gives us, as web developers, access to a users microphone (with their permission of course), which gives us a couple of opportunities. To explore this a bit, developer Pascal Birchler put together a demo which enables users to use your default WordPress search form using their voice in […]

]]>The wonders of the Web Speech API gives us, as web developers, access to a users microphone (with their permission of course), which gives us a couple of opportunities. To explore this a bit, developer Pascal Birchler put together a demo which enables users to use your default WordPress search form using their voice in addition to text.

What’s it Do?

Voice Search adds a simple microphone icon to your search form that users can click on to activate voice search. This will work on mobile devices as well as on the web, in most modern browsers. It fits into just about any theme, and works with plugins that extend WordPress search, like SearchWP and Relevanassi.

The plugin was developed as a sort of proof of concept, but it has had a few additions that make it ready to start working with any WordPress theme out there. So if you want to give your users the extra ability to search using their voice, you need only to install it.

How’s it Work?

Install and activate the plugin. I wish I can say more, but that’s really all there is too it. The microphone icon will be added to your search form automatically, and there are no settings for the plugin.

The Voice Search button in action

If you are a developer, the plugin is also a great first step into looking at the Web Speech API, and how it can be used within WordPress.

Costs, Caveats, Etc.

Voice Search is free and still in its early stages. I’m sure there are improvements to be made, especially in terms of styling, so if you’re interested you can check out the code on GitHub. And if you have any questions or feature requests for the developers, you can visit the support forums on WP.org.

Resources

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/voice-search/feed/0WP-Sweephttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/771732
http://tidyrepo.com/wp-sweep/#respondFri, 17 Apr 2015 14:02:20 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3196In the past, I’ve reviewed Optimize Database which is a great way of getting a handle on your WordPress database and trimming it down when it gets to bloated. But I’d like to add WP-Sweep into the mix, which does some of the same things, some things different, and in general makes database optimization extremely simple. […]

]]>In the past, I’ve reviewed Optimize Database which is a great way of getting a handle on your WordPress database and trimming it down when it gets to bloated. But I’d like to add WP-Sweep into the mix, which does some of the same things, some things different, and in general makes database optimization extremely simple.

What’s it Do?

WP-Sweep adds a new utility to the WordPress admin that cleans up some common problems with the WordPress database. It optimizes for post revisions, unused and spam comments, orphaned user and term metadata, old and unused database tables, and expired transients. For each of these, WP-Sweep allows you to dive into the details of what will be removed from your database (in plain English) before it actually sweeps things up. You can also optimize one category at a time, or all at once.

How’s it Work?

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you can actually start using it by going to Tools -> Sweep.

In the WP-Sweep settings screen you will see a list of potential optimizations that can be made to the WordPress database, organized by category. For each individual element, it will either indicate N/A if there are no optimizations to be made, or include a “Details” and “Sweep” button if there are.

The WP-Sweep interface

Clicking on the “Details” link will show you a list of individual items that will be removed. For instance, for spam or trashed comments that are being removed, you will get a list of users that the comments are attributed to. Details help you sort out if the optimization is really worthwhile.

Clicking the “Sweep” button will remove the data from your database altogether. This is irreversible, so remember that none of this data can ever be recovered. However, you don’t have to worry about it too much, because WP-Sweep focuses on the extraneous and trivial parts of your database, not places where any content will actually be effected.

At the bottom of the page, you will see a link to “Sweep All”. You can use this to perform all of the optimizations listed at once. And that’s about all there is to it.

Costs, Caveats, Etc.

WP-Sweep is completely free, and makes good use of the API. It is simple to use, and when used regularly, can do a lot for improving performance and removing bloat on your site. If you are having any problems with it, you can ask for help from the developer on the WordPress support forums.

Resources

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/wp-sweep/feed/0Popslidehttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/756701
http://tidyrepo.com/popslide/#commentsMon, 13 Apr 2015 14:19:47 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3180If you need a simple way to add a contextual banner or message to your site’s visitors, without being too intrusive, than Popslide is the plugin for you. What’s it Do? Popslide allows you to add a customized message to the bottom or top of your site that slides in based on a couple of […]

]]>If you need a simple way to add a contextual banner or message to your site’s visitors, without being too intrusive, than Popslide is the plugin for you.

What’s it Do?

Popslide allows you to add a customized message to the bottom or top of your site that slides in based on a couple of parameters. The first parameter is how many consecutive pageviews a user has visited, and the second is how many seconds they are on your site. Only after these two conditions will your message animate in.

A basic message that slides in

The message itself is completely customizable using a WYSIWYG editor, and can contain media, links, or anything else you can think of. It’s a great way of showing some extra content to users that decide to explore your site a little, such as a link to your social media accounts or newsletter signup. You can also customize the style of the slide-in message, and even add your own custom CSS. The plugin also automatically adds an “X” button to the message, so users can easily opt out of seeing this message. It also sets a cookie which means that the message won’t show up again for that user for the amount of days you choose.

In terms of user experience, the plugin is pretty well thought out, and it’s lightweight in terms of its features. It’s a nice and simple way to get your message across.

How’s it Work?

After you install and activate the plugin, you can set it up by visiting Settings -> Popslide in the WordPress admin. The first tab, “Settings” has some basic options for getting it set up. Perhaps the most important one is right up at the top, a checkbox labeled “Active”. In order to actually turn on your notification.

A full list of options

Below that, you can chose to show the message only to administrators, for testing purposes, and switch it on on mobile devices. The next section, “Cookie” lets you set how long the “X” button should remove the message from a user’s view. The default is for 30 days, with a custom cookie name, both of which you can change. But for most cases, this will work just fine.

The last option is “Display rule”. Here you can set the conditions that must be met before a message is shown to your readers. You can specify a number of pageviews (consecutive), and / or the amount of time (in seconds) a user needs to be on your page. You can also select “and” or “or” for these conditions, so only one or both need to be met.

Now that you’ve set up your basic options, you need to add your actual message. To do so, hop on over to “Content”. Here you will see a basic WYSIWYG editor, like the one you would see in the WordPress post editor. Add any message you like, and use the Visual editor to add styling, links and media to your message. Don’t go too overboard, and try to be direct. Figure out the message you want to display to your dedicated users, and switch that on.

A familiar WYSIWYG interface

The last tab is “Styling”, which lets you specify the CSS styles associated with your message. Use the color pickers to background and font color. Select whether you want the message to appear at the bottom or top of your page, and type in the width of the message you want (in percent, pixels or rems: responsive design friendly!). You can also set the position and color of the “X” button users will click to close your message. You can even chose exactly how long you want the animation to be, in milliseconds.

Customize just about every facet of your message’s style

At the bottom of this tab, you will also see a tab to “Enable Custom CSS”. Clicking this will open a textarea where you can copy in your own CSS code to take the style of your message bit further. In most cases, this won’t be necessary, but it’s a nice addition.

After you have that all set up, and assuming you have the “Active” checkbox selected, your message will start displaying to your users based on your conditions. The plugin itself uses only a bit of CSS and some jQuery code to get the message to display, so it won’t add too much of a performance hit. And in terms of ease of use, it really doesn’t get any simpler.

Costs, Caveats, Etc.

Popslide is a free plugin, and still in it’s early stages. I, for one, would like to see the JavaScript file minified, even though this will only save a few kilobytes. But it’s a well structured plugin, and gives just the right amount of options. If you’re having some trouble with it, you can reach out the plugin developer directly on the support forums.

Resources

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/popslide/feed/5BackupBuddyhttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/714757
http://tidyrepo.com/backupbuddy/#respondWed, 01 Apr 2015 14:23:44 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3165BackupBuddy is the only plugin you need to give you piece of mind when it comes to site backups. Unlike VaultPress, which we’ve covered here before, BackupBuddy puts a real emphasis on ensuring that it is easy to manage your backups, store in remote locations, and very, very easy to restore your site at any time, or […]

]]>BackupBuddy is the only plugin you need to give you piece of mind when it comes to site backups. Unlike VaultPress, which we’ve covered here before, BackupBuddy puts a real emphasis on ensuring that it is easy to manage your backups, store in remote locations, and very, very easy to restore your site at any time, or migrate to a new server.

If you want to dive in quickly, I recorded a video that will walk you through how to set up the plugin. If you want to learn more, keep reading:

Getting Set Up

The first time you activate BackupBuddy, you will notice that you are taken to their Backup Wizard. Basically, if you enter in your email, a unique password, a schedule, and set up a remote location, you can get your first backup off the ground very quickly. If you’re looking for the path of least resistance, that’s the easiest way to go. But there is also a lot more that you can customize if you chose to dive into the plugin.

One of the first things you’ll notice, if you go to BackupBuddy -> Backups in the WordPress admin, is that there are two backup profiles already set up for you. One is for your full site, meaning your site files and database, and the other is for just your database. Clicking on either one of these profiles will begin a backup manually, right away. But the real strength of the plugin is that these profiles can be customized. The gear icon next to each one of your profiles will take you to a modal box where you can set up exactly what is you want to backup. For full backups, you can even chose exactly which files and database columns the plugin should pay attention to. And for each profile, you can set up a default location, local or remote, to store the backup. Of course, you can also create your own custom profile, by clicking the plus icon, specifying your backup and choosing your settings.

All of these settings, by the way, have global defaults. To access these you can go to BackupBuddy -> Settings where you will see some details about specific backups, as well as some basic configuration options. For instance, you can set an ImportBuddy password (which I’ll go over in a bit), which will be used by default. Most of the settings in this section can be overridden on an individual basis, but it is good to go through them and make sure everything is set correctly.

Basic settings, specify which files to exclude

Why set up multiple profiles? There are a few reasons. You probably have a good reason to backup your database, which changes rapidly, on a more regular basis then you do the rest of your site, which is less likely to change. You also might want to send a lean version of your backup to one remote location, and your full backup somewhere else. This is all possible thanks to profiles.

Storing and Automating your Backups

By default, BackupBuddy will store your backups on your local server, where WordPress is installed. This is generally not a great idea, since you won’t have access to those files if something goes wrong with your whole server, so BackupBuddy encourages you to set up a remote location for your backups to be stored. The plugin interfaces with a number of cloud storage options, including Amazon AWS, Dropbox, Rackspace, and it’s own proprietary cloud storage solution, BackupBuddy Stash, which is by far the simplest to set up. You can also pick from a few other options, such as Email, FTP and SFTP, if you have a custom solution for storage.

It definitely pays to set up remote locations, which you can do by visiting BackupBuddy -> Remote Locations and clicking “Add New”. Each service has its own set of instructions, and the plugin will guide you through how to get everything up and running. You can set up as many locations as you want, and then hook them up to backup profiles or schedules to get the exact flow you want.

Add from a list of remote locations to store your backup

The whole point of a good backup solution is that it runs in the background, and is there when you need it. Fortunately, it’s easy to set up a schedule for your backups with just a few clicks by hopping over to BackupBuddy -> Schedules. From there, you really just need to set up how often you want to run your backups, which profile to pull from, add some remote locations and schedule your first run. After that everything will run seamlessly for you, while you keep going with your site. And you can set up multiple schedules, each recurring at different intervals for your profiles.

Restoring and Migrating

Restoring your site quickly to a previous backup, either from your database or site files, really couldn’t be easier. You just go to BackupBuddy -> Restore/Migrate, navigate through your list of backups, and chose either “Browse and Restore Files” or “Database Rollback”. The former allows you to select exactly which of your site files you want to reset back to a previous backup. The latter will rollback your whole database.

This works great for something quick, when you just need to correct a mistake or rollback past some content that may have been harmful. But if you are restoring your whole site, or migrating your site to another server, then you will need to use ImportBuddy. At it’s core, ImportBuddy is really just a single PHP file that you can download from the Restore/Migrate page. When you do, you’ll be prompted to enter a password, or use the default one you set up before. To actually use ImportBuddy though, you need to upload the file and a zip file of your backup to a clean server. By that I mean a server that has nothing installed it, not even WordPress. BackupBuddy will take care of everything for you. After you’ve uploaded the right files, you can go to “http://yoursite.com/importbuddy.php” and follow the instructions. In no time at all, you’ll have a site that is fully restored or migrated over from the site you uploaded. It really is that easy, and works with almost zero friction. The ImportBuddy process is really what gives BackupBuddy the edge, and gives me some confidence that it works when it needs to.

ImportBuddy makes migrations extremely simple

Server Tools, Security, and a Whole Lot More

On top of your basic backup management, BackupBuddy also has a few other tools that you can use. For instance, Server Tools will let you know all about your server, and will clue you in if something is not configured right, or if there is something wrong with your database. You can also get a full list of Cron jobs running on your server. Malware Scan is another tool the plugin provides, which will scan through your site and look for potential problems. I’m not doing it justice by just giving it a mention here, but this is a long review.

iThemes is a solid company. They build great products, and BackupBuddy is one of their oldest. Their constantly improving it, and always putting security and ease of use first. It will take you no time at all to get it set up, and once you do, you’ll never have to worry about it again.

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/backupbuddy/feed/0Private Content Login Redirecthttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/706348
http://tidyrepo.com/private-content-login-redirect/#respondMon, 30 Mar 2015 14:03:54 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3159If you’re running a site with a lot of private pages, it can be a bit unwieldy to point users in the right direction. Private Content Login Redirect takes care of that for you, redirecting guest users to the login page whenever they stumble on private pages. What’s it Do? Quite simply, whenever a user […]

]]>If you’re running a site with a lot of private pages, it can be a bit unwieldy to point users in the right direction. Private Content Login Redirect takes care of that for you, redirecting guest users to the login page whenever they stumble on private pages.

What’s it Do?

Quite simply, whenever a user who is not logged in visits one of your private pages (pages or posts that you have published as “Private”), they will be redirected to a log-in page. The default behavior is for users to see a 404 page, which can be a bit confusing. Private Content Login offers a bit of a better user experience, especially for membership sites.

And that’s it.

How’s it Work?

Whenever you publish a post or page, regardless of post type, you can mark a post as private by setting the “Visibility” in the Publish metabox to Private. A private post means that only logged in users will be able to actually view a post. With Private Content Login Redirect set up, guest users (users not logged in) trying to access these pages will be automatically redirected to your login page.

Setting it up is about as easy as activating the plugin. Once you’ve done that, it will just start working. If you want to turn the functionality off, you can deactivate the plugin.

Costs, Caveats, Etc.

Private Content Login Redirect is a free plugin, hosted on WordPress.org. There’s been a couple of changes, mostly to fix some small bugs and keep up with computability of the latest version of WordPress. Other than that, if you happen to spot a problem, you should visit the support forums.

Resources

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/private-content-login-redirect/feed/0wpDataTableshttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/687040
http://tidyrepo.com/wpdatatables/#commentsWed, 25 Mar 2015 15:06:36 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3141Anybody who’s tried to get proper data tables working using front-end code knows that it is a very difficult task. But if you’re using WordPress, wpDataTables makes it easy to upload a CSV, Excel file, or even serialized array, and turn it into a fully functional HTML / CSS table or chart. Responsive Tables and Charts Creating filterable, […]

]]>Anybody who’s tried to get proper data tables working using front-end code knows that it is a very difficult task. But if you’re using WordPress, wpDataTables makes it easy to upload a CSV, Excel file, or even serialized array, and turn it into a fully functional HTML / CSS table or chart.

Responsive Tables and Charts

Creating filterable, sortable, and customizable tables out of serialized data can be difficult enough. But making those tables responsive is even harder. Fortunately, there are some pretty standard formats when it comes to tables, and it really doesn’t make sense to re-invent the wheel every time you need to add a table to your site. WpDataTables is meant to do that work for you. All you need to do is upload a CSV file, or excel file, or basically any serialized data format, and the plugin will convert it into a table that can fit into any theme. In fact, to get started, you just need to click through to wpDataTables -> Add New, upload your file and select from a few options.

Basic settings for your table

If you’re looking to make your data table responsive, there are two options to pay attention to. The first is the checkbox marked “Responsive” which will ensure that the table is flexible and responds to your device width. The second is “Limit table layout”, which will make sure that the table doesn’t break the container. But, if you’re table has several rows, it actually might be a good idea to leave this option unchecked, and allow users to scroll horizontally through data.

Tables generated by the plugin are completely sortable and filterable on the front-end. So users can quickly paginate through entires, use a search bar to filter to only the data they need, or re-sort data based on certain rows. If you enable the “Table tools” option, users on your site will also be able to export your table as a CSV, Excel file, PDF, copy, or print it out with the click of a button.

You can also spawn charts based on your data sources, right from the table editor. wpDataTables uses Google Chart Tools to create SVG + HTML charts right on your site. Just remember that in order to make a chart work properly on your site, you need to include both a column and row for your data. You can chose from Pie Chart, Line Chart, Area Chart, and Column chart. Like your tables, these charts will be fully responsive, and actually keep things pretty performant, given what it generates. I’d recommend checking out the demo’s on the plugin’s website to see how that works.

Lots of Customization

By default, the tables created by the plugin simply inherit styles from your theme. But if you go to wpDataTables -> Settings there are a lot more opportunities for customization. In the “Main Settings” section, you can control the basic layout of your tables, including a base skin, number format, where charts should be rendered (above or below the table), and other basics.

But the real customizations come below that. In the “Color and font settings” section, wpDataTables gives you a color picker for just about every element in your tables, so that you can specify exactly how you want it to look. Simply go through and set your colors for your rows, hover states, buttons, highlights, overlays, and more. And at the bottom, you can select a font stack from a drop-down list to change the fonts of your table from your themes.

Editing the color and style of your tables

And if you need even more customization, there is a textarea for Custom JavaScript and Custom CSS, which the plugin will inject automatically for you alongside your tables.

Within the table itself, it is also possible to customize each column of data. You can specify a special CSS class, define what kind of data it is, and manage other style attributes, column by column. To access this, visit wpDataTables -> wpDataTables and click the “Edit” link under any table you’ve created.

Editing individual columns

Add Tables Anywhere

Like a lot of plugins, you can actually insert data tables into your posts and pages using a shortcode. In its simplest form, your shortcode will look like this:

[wpdatatable id=1]

This will go ahead and embed your table right in your page, with all of your default settings. If you hop on over to the page on your site, you will see your fully responsive table in action, ready to be sorted. But you can also use the shortcode to specify how to include a rendered chart. Let’s say you created a pie chart, and you want to show just the chart, not your table. You would simply use the shortcode:

[wpdatatable id=1 show_only_chart=true]

It’s actually also possible to include placeholder variables using your shortcode, but that is a bit more advanced then this walkthrough.

A table in action

Great Support, Great Documentation

Some plugin’s don’t have thorough enough documentation. wpDataTables does not have that problem. The plugin’s documentation is about 150 pages long, though it is mostly screenshots and quick walkthroughs. It’s a great resource if you are hunting for a specific feature, or running into a problem. More useful for beginners, however, is probably the series of video tutorials the plugin developer has created to guide you through the process of creating tables and charts, and adding them to your site.

As a paid plugin, wpDataTables also has great support straight from the developer, so if you are running into a problem that documentation can’t solve, I’d recommend going to the support forums for help.

wpDataTables is an incredibly thorough plugin, and given the difficulty in getting tables and charts to work properly in HTML / CSS across all browsers and devices, it is well worth the $28 dollars if you find yourself ever working with tables and data in WordPress.

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/wpdatatables/feed/2Stop Emailshttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/678663
http://tidyrepo.com/stop-emails/#commentsMon, 23 Mar 2015 13:52:27 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3143I’m a big fan of plugins that do exactly what they sound like they’ll do. Stop Emails is no exception. What’s it Do? Stop Emails hooks into WordPress’ default email function, wp_mail() and stops all outgoing emails. Think of it like a panic button to temporary suspend all of your emails. Emails will fail silently and in […]

]]>I’m a big fan of plugins that do exactly what they sound like they’ll do. Stop Emails is no exception.

What’s it Do?

Stop Emails hooks into WordPress’ default email function, wp_mail() and stops all outgoing emails. Think of it like a panic button to temporary suspend all of your emails. Emails will fail silently and in the background, but you can enable an option to log all outgoing emails that were stopped.

Why would you want to do this? If your site is running into a problem and you need to stop emails quickly, it’s a good option. But probably more useful is when your testing out your site locally, and want to be able to log emails and check that they were sent without actually sending them. That’s what I’d use it for anyway.

How’s it Work?

Activate Stop Emails. Tutorial over.

Basically, the plugins begins to stop emails as soon as it’s activated. If you want to start sending emails again, simply deactivate the plugin. There is only one setting, which you can access by going to Settings -> Stop Emails. You can chose to either “Disable Logging” or “Log stopped emails to the PHP Error Log,” which can be useful for debugging purposes. By defaults, logging is switched off.

Your only setting

That’s really all there is to the plugin. It’s something to add to your developer’s toolset, and from time to time, it will be exactly what you need.

Costs, Caveats, Etc.

Stop Emails is fairly new, but I don’t imagine many features will be added to it. If you are looking for some help, or want to get in contact with the plugin developer, your best bet is the support forums on WP.org.

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/stop-emails/feed/1User Role Editorhttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/623349
http://tidyrepo.com/user-role-editor/#respondMon, 09 Mar 2015 14:36:01 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3112We’ve gone over a few different plugins that can help you manage users in the past, but User Role Editor is probably the most comprehensive plugin around when it comes to managing users and their capabilities. What’s it Do? User Role Editor gives you an easy way to walk through each one of your user roles […]

]]>We’ve gone over a few different plugins that can help you manage users in the past, but User Role Editor is probably the most comprehensive plugin around when it comes to managing users and their capabilities.

What’s it Do?

User Role Editor gives you an easy way to walk through each one of your user roles (Subscriber, Editor, Author, etc.) and manage exactly what each user can do with a few checkboxes. The plugin’s admin provides a drop-down with all of your current user roles, and then a list of capabilities, things like read_posts or install_plugins. You simply need to check off which capabilities should be assigned to each role.

There are also a couple of handy features bundled with the plugin. For instance, you can convert capabilities to a “human readable” form which changes something like “edit_private_posts” to “Edit private posts,” making the whole process a bit more usable. You can also use the plugin to quickly add a new role, or assign a default role for new users. You can even manage capabilities for individual users.

How’s it Work?

After you install and activate the plugin, there are a few global options that you can set up. Go to Settings -> User Role Editor to get started. From the “General” tab you can specify whether or not capabilities in the editor should be listed out in “human readable” form, and whether or not the administrator role should be editable. The “Additional Modules” tab can basically be left alone, but the “Default Roles” tab allows you to specify what the role for a new user should be. This is normally “Subscriber” but you can select any existing role from the drop-down menu.

Basic settings

To actually start editing user roles, you can go to Users -> User Role Editor. At the top of the page you will see a drop-down list of all the user roles that exist on your site. Below this, potential capabilities for users will be listed out, with a checkbox next to each, ranging from the ability to install and activate plugins to the ability to delete other people’s posts. Simply check off the capabilities you would like to enable for each role, and click the “Update” button.

Editing capabilities with “human readable” option on

If you want to switch out capabilities for a single user, rather then an entire user role, you can go to Users -> All Users. When you hover over a user, you will see a new hyperlink for “Capabilities”. This will bring you to the same menu as above, except only a single user’s capabilities will be shown.

In the User Role Editor, there are also a few more things that you can do. On the right side, you will see buttons to “Add Role”, “Rename Role” and “Add Capability”. Each is fairly simple. For “Add Role,” you can chose to replicate another user role’s capabilities to give you a good baseline. If you chose to add a capability, you’ll need to actually hook into it within your theme to make it functional.

Adding a new role

All in all, User Role Editor solves a fairly common problem with a pretty nice interface, so if you find yourself needing to custom user role’s and capabilities, it is worth checking out.

Costs, Caveats, Etc.

User Role Editor is free, and updated fairly frequently to keep up with the latest changes to WordPress, and occasionally, with new features. There is also a Pro Version available, with a bunch more features for managing users. If you are looking to get help with the plugin, the support forums are the best place to look.

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/user-role-editor/feed/0MailChimp for WordPresshttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/610498
http://tidyrepo.com/mailchimp-wordpress/#commentsThu, 05 Mar 2015 14:19:01 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3090If you haven’t heard of MailChimp, you probably never listened to the Serial Podcast. If that’s the case, it’s an awesome email marketing platform that allows you to collect contacts, send and design emails, and get full reports on how they did. It’s what we use here at Tidy Repo. And if you want to […]

]]>If you haven’t heard of MailChimp, you probably never listened to the Serial Podcast. If that’s the case, it’s an awesome email marketing platform that allows you to collect contacts, send and design emails, and get full reports on how they did. It’s what we use here at Tidy Repo. And if you want to integrate MailChimp into your WordPress site, there’s no plugin I’d recommend more than MailChimp for WordPress.

Integrating with MailChimp

MailChimp for WordPress has a free and a pro version, both work the same way, but the latter has a few more features, which I’ll touch on throughout this post. But hey, if you’re looking to give the Pro version a try, make sure to click here to get 25% off. But back to the plugin. Once you install and activate it, you’ll need to actually connect the plugin to your MailChimp account. Click on the MailChimp for WP -> MailChimp link in the admin panel, and you will see a text field for you to enter your API key. If you click the “Get your API Key here” link, it will take you to the MailChimp dashboard, where you will see the key you need. Just copy and paste that to the text field, and you’re done. The plugin will automatically import your lists into WordPress so you can start adding subscription forms anywhere on your site.

Adding your license key

Setting Up Your First Form

There are two ways to prompt your users or readers to subscribe. The first is with a basic form. To get started with that, go to MailChimp for WP -> Forms. If you are using the free version of the plugin, there will only be one form available to you. In the pro version, you’ll have the opportunity to create multiple versions. The plugin will set you up with a basic form, but you can customize it however you want. Click the “Edit Form” button to start customizing it. For your form, make sure to chose a list that you want subscribers to be attached to, the plugin will show any list that is set up on MailChimp.

Customizing your sign-up form (Pro Version)

To start actually customizing your form, you can either edit your markup directly, or use the “Add a field” drop-down to automatically populate the form with fields from your list. For instance, you can select “First Name” if that is collected in your list, and this will display the proper input tag required to collect this information from your users. Just click the “Add to Form” button to actually add this field. Then rearrange however you want. There are also several form variables, listed in the right sidebar, which you can use to autopopulate your form. For instance, using {email} within the markup will pull an email from a logged in user, and add this information to the form automatically. For each form, there are also a list of settings for you to customize. You can enable AJAX submission (pro feature), so that the form is submitted to MailChimp without a page refresh. Or you can make sure that double opt-in is enabled, meaning that users will receive an email to confirm before they are officially subscribed. You can also hide the form after it is submitted, and send yourself a copy of the data filled out every time a form is submitted.

Customizing messages

At the bottom of the form settings, you will see the “Messages” section. Here, you can customize what text a user will see when the form returns an error, or a user is successfully subscribed. HTML tags like strong and em are allowed here if you’d like to take advantage of that. Once you’re all done, just click the “Update Form” button. On the main form settings page, there are also a few more settings, notably whether or not you want to add CSS styles (or just use your own), and what the base color should be. In the pro version, you will also be able to set global defaults for all of the options that I went over.

Adding Your Form

There are a couple of ways to actually add your form, and start converting users to email subscribers. The first is with a shortcode, shown next to each form, which can be added to any post or page. It will look a bit like this:

Your email:

The other way is with a template tag, which you can add to any file in your theme. To do so requires a simple function:

if( function_exists( 'mc4wp_form' ) ) {
mc4wp_form( 0 );
}

Making sure to replace the “0” with the actual ID of your form (or leaving it blank in the free version). And that’s about it. A fully integrated form on your site’s front-end.

Taking Advantage of Checkboxes

The other way to collect subscribers is to simply add a “Subscribe to my newsletter” type checkbox to the bottom of forms where you are already collecting user’s emails. MailChimp for WordPress let’s you do this with the click of a few buttons. First, go to MailChimp for WP -> Checkboxes and select the list from MailChimp you want to add users to. Chose whether or not you want users to double opt-in, or automatically update, then go to the “Checkbox Settings” section.

Quick and easy checkboxes

Here, you can select where you want to add this checkbox, either your “Comment Form” or “Registration Form”. In both cases, you can customize what the label text should be (“Sign me up for the newsletter!” by default), and click the Save button. This will add a handy little checkbox that, when checked off, will automatically subscribe logged in or new users to the list you picked. It’s a great way to get conversions from your most active existing users.

Getting MailChimp Up and Running

If you’re looking to send beautiful email to your users, MailChimp is a great choice. And to add it to your site, use MailChimp for WP. There are a few features I didn’t go over, such as advanced reporting on subscribers, and a CSS builder which allows you to customize every aspect of your form’s style. Their features worth checking out.

The CSS style builder in action

The pro version of MailChimp for WP has a few different licenses for single site, or multiple sites. The cost is reasonable, considering you get AJAX form submission, multiple forms, checkbox integration with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, and full reporting / statistics. And make sure to click through here to get 25% off of your purchase of any license. Thanks to Danny van Kooten for setting that up. Be sure to let me know if you have any questions or are unsure about something below.

]]>http://tidyrepo.com/mailchimp-wordpress/feed/1File Awayhttp://tracking.feedpress.it/link/8869/600525
http://tidyrepo.com/file-away/#commentsMon, 02 Mar 2015 15:02:57 +0000http://tidyrepo.com/?p=3083There are many, many different ways to use WordPress. Some of you may wish to use it as a place for clients or users to quickly upload files, view them, and download them. To that end, File Away gives you an easy to use, and super customizable, front-end form that can be used to upload […]

]]>There are many, many different ways to use WordPress. Some of you may wish to use it as a place for clients or users to quickly upload files, view them, and download them. To that end, File Away gives you an easy to use, and super customizable, front-end form that can be used to upload files to a directory of your choosing, and quickly view and download these files, all with a few shortcodes.

What’s it Do?

File Away, in its simplest form, is a plugin that allows you to add a file uploader to your sites front-end which can upload files straight to a directory (any directory) on your server. This uploaders uses AJAX to make sure that files can be uploaded smoothly, and comes standard with a progress bar, directory selection, and the ability to rename files on the fly. In addition, you can use a shortcode to display a list of files from your directories to users, to give them the ability to download a file straight from the front-end. You can also easily control who can view the upload form and directory listing, and add previews for these items in a built-in lightbox.

File Away has a ton of options, meaning you can customize just about every aspect of the uploading process, from who can access each form, to the styling of every detail. This is both a strength and a weakness, because it can be a little hard to get into the plugin, but extremely useful for the many edge cases that can arise. In general, I’ve found that it is fine to trust defaults for the most part, and only set things that you find necessary. To help with this process, the plugin has built-in tutorials, as well as a powerful shortcode generator which you absolutely should use to make your life easier.

For the most simple of uploading tasks, this plugin might be a bit overkill. But if you want to turn a section of your WordPress site into a complete file storage and management solution, File Away is the way to go.

How’s it Work?

After you install and activate the plugin, the most important thing to set up is where your files should be uploaded to. I’d recommend creating these on your server using FTP, or using an existing directory (uploads for instance) for this purpose. This will help keep things organized. To begin setting this up, go to the File Away menu. In the first tab, “Basic Configuration” you will see a dropdown menu’s for setting your root and base directories. But the most important section is the “Base Directory” text fields. You can specify up to five different directories, where users will be able to upload files to on the front-end.

Setting up your directories

These have to be directories that are already set up, but File Away helps you out a bit by pre-filling in the direct path to your WordPress install. Simply enter in the path to the directories you want to be able to upload files to, enter a display name for each, and then click “Save Changes”. In this section, there are also other options that let you handle where and how files will be uploaded.

There are a few more tabs up at the top to configure some more granular details of the plugin. They are worth checking out, but with your directories set up, you can just as easily get started adding the upload forms and directory listing to the front-end of you site using the plugin’s built in shortcode generator.

Configuring Manager Mode

Navigate to any post or page, and click the new File Away button in the TinyMCE Toolbar. This will bring up a dialog box where you can chose what exactly you want to add. You will see a drop-down for “Select Shortcode”. There are several to chose from, but I find the most important to be “Directory Files” and “File Uploads”.

“File Uploads” is how you can add a file upload form to your site’s front-end. When you chose this option, you will have a whole set of parameters for you to chose from. You can chose which directory you want to upload files to with the “Base Directory” and “Sub Directory” options. You can chose whether or not multiple uploads should be allowed at the same time, and how big files can be.

Working with the file uploads shortcode

Use the “Filters” tab to chose which devices the upload form should be shown to, and which file types to allow, and use the “Styles” tab to add your own CSS classes. Once again, there are a lot of options here, but the plugin uses fairly smart defaults. So selecting only the base directory should work just fine. Once you’ve inserted this shortcode and published your page, you can navigate to it and see the file upload form in action. If you’ve selected so, users can upload multiple files at once, change the name of files on the fly, and watch their progress as files are uploaded, all without a page refresh. This part of the plugin works very well.

The “Directory Files” shortcode, on the other hand, is used to list files that have been uploaded to one of your base directories. Selecting this will give you another set of parameters to customize, the most important again being the “Base Directory” from which these files should be pulled. However, first you can either chose “Sorted List” or “Sorted Data Table”. The former will arrange directory items in a column list, and generally keeps things a bit simpler in terms of options. The latter will output a full table, and has a few more parameters that it can show.

Adding a directory of files

On either one, select your Base Directory to pull files from, and choose what kind of files should be displayed and how. The “Modes” tab has two interesting features. The first is “Flightbox” which allows you to select a type of media (PDF, Images, Video, or all), and will enable in-site previews in a lightbox for these types of files. By default files will be downloaded. But with “Flightbox” enabled, files will open in a responsive lightbox. The other is “Manager Mode”. If you turn Manager Mode on, the file listing will have a few more options available to administrators. For instance, if you are logged in as an admin (or any user role or capability you specify), you can delete, edit and rename files, right from the front-end.

A directory listing

So you can see, with just a little configuration and a few shortcodes, you can allow visitors to your site to upload files straight to a directory of your choosing, and then show a list of them to anybody on your site. And as an admin, you can customize these files without ever having to go to the WordPress back-end. It’s a hop, skip, and a jump to making this work for, say, members only, or in a special clients page on your site. And there is lots more that can be done with File Away, from listing files from posts and pages, to included video tutorials about the plugin with a simple shortcode, if you’d like to educate your visitors on how to use the plugin. I’ve just gone over the basics here, so you get a sense of what the plugin can do.

Costs, Caveats, Etc.

File Away is well maintained, and well supported, and in terms of performance and security, it is stellar. My only qualm with the plugin is that it is a bit difficult to get into, as I mentioned, because there are so many options, shortcodes and shortcode parameters. It is really a plugin meant for people that work with front-end file uploading and file management on their WordPress every day, and need a lot of customization and extendability. I know there are quite a few site owners out there that fit that bill.

If you’re looking for support, your best bet is the support forums on WordPress.org, or by referring to the video tutorials built right into the plugin’s settings.